Blogging Everyday in July|A Poem About Mass Attacks

I’m sure everyone is aware of the shooting that happened at Pulse, the club in Orlando. It was a terrible thing to happen. Any shooting is a terrible thing. Any mass killing spree is a terrible thing. And a lot of them seem to happen in the name of something, whether it’s a god someone believes in or something that a person believes that they stand for. Battles like this are things that I try to stay out of. My thoughts are controversial for some Christians.
I believe that if I follow the God that I say I do, then my first job is to love. God loves and accepts his children. Whether or not we live the way he originally created us to or not is besides the point. So I choose to love and accept everyone, regardless of their sexual orientation, gender, preference, or religion. I hope that everyone would act the same toward me, but that’s not always the case. Not every person knows how to love.

The man responsible for that shooting, it is assumed, did it because he believes homosexuality is wrong. However, it has since come out that he “struggled” with homosexuality himself. I put struggled in quotes, because once accepted, sexual orientation is no longer a struggle. One only struggles when one is resisting something they believe is wrong or sinful. (In my opinion, of course). So he hated something he saw in himself.

In saying all of this, after the shooting I felt compelled to write a poem about conviction. I don’t usually explain my poetry, but there you go.

Conviction
Maybe it’s conviction
That causes so much pain
Believing so strongly that something is wrong
Then finding it within your own self
Must be terrifying
There is either hatred or acceptance
So many choose wrong

This whole world might be broken
Thought it was held together by perfect beliefs
Beliefs that keep getting challenged
It’s not so black and white anymore
Finding more truth in the grey areas than we’d care to admit

How could someone live their life that way?
Is it sin nature?
Or just sin?
Or could it honestly just be nature?
Something we found we hated in our genetic code
Refusing to evolve with it
Resisting until we feel we might just give in
Or give up
Take a gun to your head
Or harm someone else in this wrongful conviction